Let Them Drink Coke! Losing Hearts and Minds in Afghanistan

The report goes further than showing that the main figure is an idiot. This cameo, this snapshot of the mindset of an American official in Afghanistan, demonstrates appalling lack of understanding of a country with which the US is deeply involved. The deep ignorance of the central character is terrifying. His rejoicing when he forces an Afghan van driver to pay $20 in road tax is grotesque. Here's the PBS piece:

Miranda Kennedy [anchor] : It's a hot, grueling afternoon at the toll plaza on the Kabul-Kandahar highway. Chris Anderson is an advisor to Afghanistan's finance ministry. That sounds like an exalted position. Often, as today, it means standing out on the tarmac, trying to convince Afghan drivers to pay a toll to use the highway. [Scene shifts to Anderson.]

Anderson: [to his interpreter] Can you please explain to him that I understand these people need to be somewhere, but unfortunately if he wants to use this road, there is no choice but to pay. [Dialogue involving the interpreter, Anderson and the van driver]

Anderson : "I understand what you're saying sir ; unfortunately everybody wants to pay tomorrow, and what happens is they come along tomorrow and say let me pay tomorrow so . . ."

Kennedy: Anderson is talking to a young guy who runs a taxi service between Kabul and some outlying villages. His van is loaded with half a dozen villagers, a stack of very weathered suitcases, a bicycle and a couple sheep. Because he's driving a commercial van, he's supposed to pay $20 for a monthly pass. But he offers up every excuse in the book not to shell out, including a sick child in the back. But Anderson is having none of it.

Anderson: "He must make a decision right now to either pay this money or to turn around, and if he refuses then we will have to ask the police to come and tell him to move."

Kennedy : "The traffic police appear. And half an hour later, our supposedly-penniless driver finally gives in."

Anderson : He bought it, he bought the sticker.

Kennedy: There he is, with his blue sticker!

Anderson : It was nothing to him to waste 20 minutes arguing with us rather than buy the decal.

Kennedy: But he had the money.

Anderson : He had the money the whole time.

***

Yes, the van-driver had the money demanded by the US official. In a country where foreign advisors get over $100,000 a year and an Afghan schoolteacher earns $70 a month (if the money comes on time), he had a whole twenty dollars. Here we have a fat-cat expat, about to return to air-conditioned comfort, running water and a good dinner, confronting a kid who is trying to make a living by driving a van taking people and "suitcases, a bicycle and a couple sheep" from one decrepit village to another. He and his passengers are not just poor : they are verging on being destitute in modern democratic Afghanistan. And a well-fed foreigner rips him off for twenty dollars.

Is there any wonder why Afghans hate Americans?

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